Liberty and equality, stoics and epicureans

Just as there is an enormous amount of tension between the consular ideals of liberty and equality, so too is there in aspiring to provide the best health care available while simultaneously striving to make health care ubiquitous and universally accessible. Anti-Gnostic does a great job succinctly articulating as much, with the following excerpt of demonstrating particular perspicacity:The whole point is that *old people are going to die* with probability...

Boudica

Professional podcaster Jamie Jeffers, in a review of the History Channel's Vikings (which I've never seen), comments approvingly on the show's depiction of Lagertha*:I really like the fact that they have a tough-as-nails warrior woman and they don't treat it like it's strange... they did an excellent job demonstrating that there were warrior women and warrior women were very effective. It does a good job dispelling a lot of the innate sexism that...

If everyone is a part of everything, nothing means much of anything

Listening to a story on NPR's The World about the US citizenship exam got me wondering on what things involving human membership is the left more discriminating (in the older sense of the word) than the right is:One of the more obscure questions, she said, includes questions like “Who wrote the Federalist Papers?” “Most Americans could not answer the question, so I'm not sure why it's on the test,” she says.   Winke has found...

Pat on the butt too much for Pats' fans

As a complement to Jayman's recent post on state laws regarding corporal punishment, I'll note that blacks express the greatest support for the practice as a means of disciplining children. Additional positive correlates include being male, politically conservative, and of modest intelligence. The GSS item doesn't specify who the spanker is, though it's reasonable to assume that much of the time the respondent has a parent in mind--if the question...

Those disapproving of Obama more intelligent than those approving of him!

Although the 2012 GSS did not include any questions on presidential voting plans for the same year, the survey did sneak in a question on presidential approval, querying respondents on whether they approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the job of president. Because it's fun and often causes people to make fools of themselves, here are IQ estimates...

Trayvon Martin Day

The administration of Carrick high school in Pittsburgh planned and subsequently scrapped "Trayvon Martin Day" in which students would be encouraged to wear hoodies in celebration and remembrance of the dead teenager. The school stepped back after opposition from several parents who publicly expressed concerns over the day, specifically with the consequences it would...

Cruel caricaturing of Derb Towners

See if you are able to detect something sinister about the following typical write-up of an up-and-coming community organizer and activist: Brooks has appeared at the National Press Club in Washington and hosted web seminars with Cornel West, a similarly polished promoter of what West calls "color consciousness", and Julian Bond, who has spent his life promoting African-American rights and culture. Brooks has spoken before A Better Chance, a job...

Endovelicus

Granting the general political ineptitude of Republican pols and the continual creep of executive power at the expense of congressional restraint, why isn't the riposte to the assertion that the 2012 presidential election was a referendum on Obamacare that the GOP won the house? Every congressional district in the country had an election on the same night, and Republicans came out 33 bodies ahead, the vast majority of the victors having incorporated...

Nigeria had fewer people than Chicago when I was a wee lad

The Pew Research Center is an honest organization that provides often interesting and useful data on social issues, public opinion and demographic trends. That assertion, though, needs to be qualified by pointing out that Pew is honest by way of commission, while it is often less so by way of omission. The center regularly conducts a survey entitled "News IQ" in which American...